


Rey's Journey

by WWofWest



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), POV Rey (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Reylo - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22761154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WWofWest/pseuds/WWofWest
Summary: What happens when a force bond is broken and half of the powerful dyad is stripped away? How does the survivor go on? After the defeat of the Emperor on Exegol, Rey struggles to come to terms with the absence of Ben Solo.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Reylo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	1. Nothing

I am nothing. 

I lay in the dark, huddled in my bunk. I’d lain there for the better part of two weeks, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, being… nothing.

The crew of the Millennium Falcon — my friends — did their best to care for me, but they were troubled by my odd behavior. Even BB-8 and C-3PO had discussed my condition in worried tones, but C-3PO always sounded worried about something, even on a good day. From behind the locked door to my quarters, I could hear my friends' hushed and not-so-hushed conversations echoing in the corridors. It was strange, being the topic of their discussions, overhearing them talk about me, but remaining oddly outside of it all. I was a disembodied soul drifting through the passages of the Falcon, haunting them. I had become a ghost. 

They didn’t understand. None of them could understand.


	2. Escaping Exegol

On Exegol I emerged from the darkness of the crumbling Sith citadel into a world on fire.

Whether any of the Emperor’s horde of faceless, black-clad worshipers had survived his destruction was unclear. I had been prepared to fight my way out of the citadel, but it was as empty as a tomb. As I ran through the darkness toward the distant slash of light that marked the entrance, I didn’t encounter a single living thing. For a few precious seconds I paused to retrieve Ben’s blaster from among the corpses of the Knights of Ren. I refused to leave anything that had belonged to him in this evil place. An ominous rumble from the collapsing subterranean lair beneath my feet quickly spurred me on.

I ran in darkness. The light seemed to purposefully retreat from me like an inescapable nightmare. I sobbed and ran harder. Finally the way opened and I burst from the Sith stronghold into the raging heart of a full-pitched battle. 

The air was filled with the scent of burning metal and carbon scoring, the roar of and scream of engines, the booming flashes of laser cannon fire, the shrieks of dying ships torn apart in mid-air. All around me was chaos and death. I had emerged from a hell of cold and shadows into a hell of fire and heat. Death behind me, death in front of me, death below me, death above me. 

Nowhere to go.

I ran. 

I don’t know where I thought I was going. There was no plan. I didn’t know if I was running toward the battle or away from it. There was nowhere safe to run _to_. I poured all my effort into speed, my breath whooping in my lungs. Anakin’s and Leia’s lightsaber hilts hung from my belt, bouncing against my thigh as I ran, and in my hand I clutched Ben’s blaster. All my weapons were useless against the titanic forces clashing all around me. Laser cannon fire exchanged between the Resistance and the Emperor’s forces lit the sky in a continuous bombardment, a rippling, thunderous roar of light and sound that felt like it would crack the heavens wide open.

Squinting skyward, I spotted the ship’s distinctive form immediately. A brilliant gleam of silver, the Millennium Falcon swooped nimbly through the flaming debris. With the agility of her namesake, she dodged enormous chunks of metal and shrapnel falling from the sky from the fleet of damaged Star Destroyers. Firing a barrage of green energy bolts, she tore into the underbelly of an enemy ship, gutting it, leaving a trail of fiery wounds. A bolt of cannon fire bounced off her shields and sent her spinning, but she swiftly corrected course. Her crew was not deterred from the fray. 

The cold, clammy shroud of darkness that had settled over me in the citadel was pierced by a sharp, crystalline shard of hope. For now it was enough for me to know my friends were alive. 

A deafening boom shook the world around me. A Star Destroyer exploded overhead, splitting the dark sky above in a retina-searing, white ball of light, as it brought its engines online in an attempt to escape the Resistance’s onslaught. The ground beneath my feet bucked and buckled and I fell. The skin on the palms of my hands shredded in the jagged dust, ash and grit covering the planet’s surface, but I barely registered the pain. 

Behind me the Sith citadel was shedding huge stone blocks as it collapsed from within. A starfighter, wreathed in flame, engines shrieking, slammed into the stronghold and detonated, sending black boulders the size of sandcrawlers crashing around me. More explosions rained down terror and rattled the bones in my body. 

I staggered to my feet, dodging around the remains of Ben’s TIE-fighter, crushed beneath an enormous twisted chunk of scorched metal. Just beyond it was Luke’s X-wing, still intact and undamaged, where I’d left it. How it had remained unscathed amid the chaos and destruction, I didn’t question. Perhaps something greater had been at work.

Guided by the voice of Luke Skywalker whispering in my ear, I clambered into the cockpit, slapped on my helmet and brought the X-wing online, launching in record time. I urged the X-wing skyward, ignoring the battle raging around me. For a moment, I felt the brush of Finn’s awareness as I cut through sky, escaping to the far side of the conflict and moving out of Exegol’s atmosphere. Finn was alive and unharmed. I pulled away from his clinging contact as I left the planet behind.

I set a course in the ship’s navigation for the Resistance Base on Ajan Kloss and felt the gut-pressing weight as the X-wing jumped into hyperspace. It wasn’t until I was well underway that I began to register pains large and small, physical and… otherwise. My whole body was trembling with adrenaline. I was alive. 

How was I still alive?


	3. Haven

Finn hit me hard, grabbing me up in a hug and spinning me around before letting my feet touch back down on the metal deck.

“Did we win?” he asked eagerly. “Because it feels like we won. Did we win? Is the Emperor gone?”

Back on Ajan Kloss, I’d located Finn and Poe in the crowd of Rebellion fighters and new compatriots who had rallied to the Resistance’s call. People familiar and unfamiliar hugged and kissed us, slapped our backs and shook our hands. Poe and Finn were genuinely happy, their excitement radiated, smiles stretching from ear to ear, as we wended our way through the press of people. The smile I wore felt stiff as a mask, but I followed their example and gamely kept it in place. Gradually we’d made our way through the crowds of celebrants back to the relative privacy aboard the Falcon.

Once we were on board my mask began to slip. Finn’s joyful exuberance pummeled at me and I pushed him gently away when he set me down. Won. Lost. What did it matter? So much destruction, so many lost… Had it been worth it? I didn’t know. I had to believe it was.

“We won,” I assured him.

Finn gave a whoop and punched the air. “Wait,” he said, his excitement suddenly dissipating. “Are you sure the Emperor is really dead this time? Because everyone thought he was dead before and turns out he wasn’t.”

“I made sure,” I said. “Trust me. He’s really, truly dead.”

“What about Kylo Ren?” Poe asked. “Tell me he’s dead too, and you’ll make me a happy man.”

I had to remind myself Poe had good reason for hating Kylo Ren. He’d been subjected to terrible mind-probe torture at Ren’s hands. He’d watched his friends and allies die and witnessed nearly the entire Resistance destroyed because of Ren’s actions. 

Still… remembering Ben’s last moments, the comment hurt.

Lando had stepped from the cockpit and Chewy leaned against the frame of the door, both listening intently. I’d brought Ben’s blaster with me as I’d left the X-wing. My hand had been clenched around it so hard my fingers were numb. I held it out to Lando who took it from me reverently. He knew what it meant.

“Ben is dead,” I said.

The significance of Kylo Ren’s true name was not lost on him. Chewy gave a long, sorrowful wail and turned back to the bridge to fall into the pilot’s chair with his great head in his hands.

“I couldn’t...” I started and then choked. “I couldn’t save him.”

“You did save him, Rey. In the end, you did save him,” Lando said, a strange mix of sorrow and hope in his gaze. “Leia knew.”

Referring to Leia in the past tense rocked me. Even before I’d left her on Ajan Kloss, I knew she had accepted her fate, whatever it may be, embraced it as she embraced me. I’d felt her presense intensely as Kylo Ren and I had battled on Kef Bir. I known the moment she had reached out to him, sacrificing herself to push back the Dark that had tormented him. But until Lando said her name, I’d held out hope, not wanting to believe she was gone.

Han, Luke, Leia, Ben…

Now I was truly adrift without a tether to anyone or anything.

Everyone was silent. None of them knew what to say. The weight of their sympathy, grief, and kindness was too heavy for me to bear. I had to get away from them. I needed a quiet place to rest and catch my breath.

Lando reached out to comfort me, but I flinched and he withdrew his hand. “Why don’t you go get cleaned up? Rest a while,” he said quietly. “We’ll be here.”

In the communal cleansing area, I leaned over the sink, resting my head on my crossed forearms. I felt sick. I wanted to be sick. I _needed_ to be sick. My stomach cramped and I gagged a few times, spitting black saliva into the sink. I turned on the tap and sluiced it down the drain. Then I washed my hands, rubbing the crusted blood off my knuckles and fingers, tried unsuccessfully to clean the black streaks from under my nails, picked the remaining grit out of the palms. Scooping up several handfuls of water, I gulped them down. 

My reflection in the mirror over the sink wasn’t recognizable. Every inch of me was covered in grime and blood or worse. My face was streaked with soot, cut with white tracks of tears I hadn’t realized had fallen, and my eyes were terribly bloodshot. My hair had come loose from some its ties and stuck out wildly in all directions.

Kicking off my boots, I unbuckled my belt with the lightsabers still attached and let it drop to the floor. Stripping off my clothes, I crammed them down the garbage chute. I had to cut the remaining ties out of my tangled hair before I stepped into cleansing pod. 

Back in my berth on the Millennium Falcon, cleaned, combed, and dressed in spare clothing, I lay down on the bunk, tucking the lightsabers under the mattress. 

In my defense, I didn’t lay down with the intent of never getting up again. It just worked out that way.


	4. The Call

_Be with me… Be with me…_

After a few days, when I hadn’t come out of my quarters, Chewbacca came to the door, hammering on the steel with his enormous hands and yowling his discontent about my self-imposed isolation. 

“Go away, Chewy!” I shouted. He kept pounding on the door but his voice took on a softer, yodeling tone. “I’m fine! I just want to be left alone!” I pulled the blanket over my head.

“Come on, Chewy,” Lando said to his friend. The banging stopped. “She needs some more time. She’ll come out when she’s ready.” 

Chewbacca gave another series of sad gurgles, indicating his confusion. “I know, I know, old buddy,” Lando said. “But you can’t rush her through this. It’ll take as long as it takes.” 

They moved down the corridor toward the bridge, Chewy muttering and growling to himself. 

_Be with me… Be with me…_

I don’t know how much time passed before they made another attempt. When I’d left Jakku, I’d stopped marking the walls to track the days. I finally accepted no one was coming for me.

“Hey, Rey?” It was Finn. “Um, yeah, is everything alright in there? You need anything?”

Cracking open my eyes, crusty with dried sleep, I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. 

“I’m fine,”I croaked, then coughed to clear my throat. There was a half a glass of water on a shelf next to my bed. Without sitting up, I fumbled with the glass and eventually managed to bring it to my lips. Most of the water dribbled down my face to dampen my pillow, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t even find the energy to wipe it away. With effort, I set the glass back on the shelf.

Drinking hurt, talking hurt, blinking hurt, breathing hurt, thinking hurt, all of it was one big ball of pain. I rolled to my side and curled into the fetal position around the ache, cradling it gently against my abdomen where it swirled and pulsed like a living creature.

“You don’t sound fine,” Finn said. “Why don’t you come out and have something to eat? You haven’t eaten anything since we left Ajan Kloss.”

“For all you know, I might have a month’s worth of rations in here,” I said, trying to feign a joking tone. 

“Do you?” Finn asked. “Do you have a month’s rations in there?”

“Maybe.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have a big bowl of stew? Good, hearty, hot food. Everything a growing Jedi needs.”

I snorted involuntarily at his attempt at humor. “Sounds tempting. Who’s turn was it to cook?”

“Poe’s.” 

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

“Actually, it’s not bad,” Finn said. “For a Rebel pilot with very little impulse control, he’s a surprisingly good cook.”

“I’m not sure if I trust the opinion of someone raised on Imperial nutridrink.”

“That’s true, but I’m making up for lost time.” He chuckled. “I’ve eaten so much real food lately I don’t think my old Stormtrooper armor would fit anymore.”

There was silence for a few moments. I pictured Finn, forearm over his head, leaning up against the door, his voice echoing against the metal that separated us. “How about it?” Finn asked. “Come have some dinner with us.”

I loved Finn but I wished he would go away. I was tired. Even trying to have a conversation was exhausting. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open. I just wanted to go back to sleep. 

“Sure,” I lied. “Give me a minute. I’ll meet you in the main hold.”

“Great!” Finn sounded hopeful and relieved. “See you in a bit.”

His footsteps retreated. 

I closed my eyes.

_Be with me… Be with me…_

More banging on the door. Shouting. Poe and Finn arguing loudly. 

“Damn it, Rey!” Poe yelled. “I’m not going to let you do this forever! The rest of these idiots might treat you like some sorta fragile flower, but I know you’re tougher than that. You killed the Emperor! Defeated his whole Sith army!” 

I didn’t do it alone, I wanted to say. I didn’t do it alone.

There was more angry shouting, the sound of a scuffle, Chewy’s angry growl as he separated the combatants. The door banged a single time under Poe’s kick. “I’m serious, Rey! I’m not going to let you lock yourself in there and starve to death. I will blow this door open if I have to!”

He’d said I wasn’t alone.

Then he left me here alone.

_Be with me…_

A rough jolt made me reluctantly open my eyes. It was like lifting two blast doors.

My tongue was as thick and dry as a Jakku sandstorm in my mouth. I reached for the glass. It was empty. It dropped from my clumsy fingers to the mattress. Another rough jolt and the glass rolled from my bunk and shattered on the floor.

The Millennium Falcon was entering atmosphere. 

I sighed, a long and drawn out emptying of my lungs. It felt like too much effort to bother inhaling. 

The darkness rose up, soft and deep, spreading all around me like ink dropped in water. When it withdrew, I teetered on the edge of a precipice. My feet scrabbled for purchase. Below me yawned a great void, a hungry maw of nothingness.

 _Why haven’t you come to me?_ I screamed, pouring out all the anguish I’d contained since leaving the catacombs beneath the Sith citadel. The universe shuddered and tilted around me. The darkness shifted and rolled back.

There was nothing but the wind, the water and the barest glow of gray stormcloud light. I could feel the cold, salty spray on my skin, plastering my hair against my scalp. Our lightsabers clashed and sparked against each other as the towering waves smashed all around us, threatening to drag us from the hulking steel wreck of the Death Star into the depths. I leapt away. You followed, as dark and inexorable as death on my heels. We fought and parted, fought and parted, the greater forces of light and darkness swirling around us and through us.

The Dark Side of the Force drove you with its cruel whip like a slave. There was no escape and no mercy for creatures of the Dark Side. All you’d known was torment. You knew no way to lay down your weapon. You hammered me down. I fell at your feet. The Dark Side howled in triumph as you raised your blade to kill me, but you hesitated. In that hesitation, you felt Leia’s touch, a mother’s soothing hand on a child’s fevered brow. Her touch silenced the endless, cruel whispering that had driven you half-mad. She cleaved through the Dark, showing you the way through the rage and fear, giving you a moment of clarity. 

You made your choice.

Your lightsaber extinguished. It fell from your hand. You could have stopped it but you wanted the pain to end. I had to be the one to end it. You opened yourself up to accept the strike. My last desperate move reignited your lightsaber and I drove your own crackling blade deep into your body. You staggered and fell, clutching your side. 

Teetering on the cliff’s edge, surrounded by roiling darkness above the slavering void, I feel your dying again. 

My own anger bled away as I knelt at your side, watching your chest heave, your body convulse. Your eyes sought mine and held there. It was over. The profound relief you felt as your life ebbed away crushed me. In your willing acceptance of death, your broken and tormented soul, a creature created out of Dark upheaval, of fire, pain, betrayal and rage, finally knew a moment of peace. 

I couldn’t bear for you to hurt anymore. I placed my hand over the wound…

The darkness wrenched me away.

There was only the precipice upon which I swayed and the emptiness. I couldn't fight anymore. The last of the light was fading and with it the last of my strength.

 _Where are you?_ I wept softly into the void. _Why have you left me all alone?_

As the light disappeared, I let myself fall.

I fell forever. 

The darkness rose up, caught me and pulled me close, cradling me like a child in its comforting embrace, whispering to me like waves on a distant shore. Your voice.

_Rey…_

_Rey…_


	5. The Wise Woman

“Rey…” I felt a cool, dry hand on my forehead. “Oh, Rey, my poor child.”

I blinked against the painful intrusion of the light. The shadow looming over me gradually came into focus. It was the be-goggled face of Maz Kanata. She looked upset, her ancient face even more wrinkled with concern than usual. Behind the thick lenses her large eyes were glassy. I tried to tell her not to be upset — _Don’t cry, Maz_ — but all that came out was a soft sigh. 

Finn crowded into my field of vision, appearing over Maz’s shoulder. “What’s wrong with her?” 

“I don’t know yet, you foolish boy,” she snapped at him. “Now kindly step back out of my light.” 

Finn moved away and Maz adjusted her goggles making her eyes appear even larger and more distorted. She stroked my cheek, took my chin firmly in her fingers and used the other hand to pry wide one of my eyelids. I tried to turn away but her small hands were unnaturally strong. She peered deeply and what she saw there distressed her because she muttered something under her breath about the stupidity of males of all species. She felt at my wrist for my pulse, then, when she was satisfied, she gently pinched the back of my hand and made an observation of the skin. 

I couldn’t be moved to care. When I started let my eyes slide shut Maz roused me with a none-too-gentle slap on the face. 

_Ow._

Chewy took offense at the rough treatment and gave a bellowing roar that made those nearest him step away. Maz didn’t even flinch. She stood, drew herself to her full four feet of height, turned on the Wookie and gave him a hard, stiff-fingered poke in the navel. He gave a surprised woof as though she’d knocked the air out of him. 

“Shut your hairy face, boyfriend,” she said. “I’m not hurting her.” 

She glared around at the other men, Poe, Finn and Lando. Even the droids were included in her scathing glare. 

“Oh my,” C-3PO said. BB-8 gave a series of querulous chirps. 

“You should have had the sense to bring her here sooner,” Maz scolded. “You have no idea what she’s been through. Just like you lot to expected a battle-wounded soldier to pull herself up by her bootstraps, have the decency to stop bleeding everywhere and get on with it.” 

“She’s injured?” Poe asked. He looked at Finn accusingly. “Did Rey tell you she was hurt?” 

Finn shook his head, raising his hands, palms up in surrender. “I-I didn’t know. She said she was fine. She looked fine.” 

“Obviously she _wasn’t_ fine,” Poe said. 

Maz rolled her eyes and waved a dismissive hand at them in disgust. “Males! You understand nothing of the subtleties of the heart. She’s not actually bleeding, but she’s badly injured just the same.” 

Finn and Poe looked even more confused. 

“Leia would have known better,” she muttered. 

A hot tear trickled from the corner of my eye. _Leia._

Noticing the tear, Maz reached down and gently wiped it away. 

Chewy gave a yodel of distress and Lando patted him comfortingly on the back. “How bad is it?” Lando asked. 

Maz shrugged. “Bad enough. She’s weak, dehydrated and… well, those are simple. We can remedy that with liquids, food, fresh air, rest. The other… I don’t know. That wound is much deeper.” 

My eyes had started to slide shut again and Maz gave me another slap, this one sharper than before, and tweaked my chin for good measure. “Stay awake, my girl. Keep away from shadows until you’re back solidly in this world. You’ve been longing too hard for the other.” 

Turning to those around her, she began to bark orders. Someone lifted me and placed me on a gurney, covering me with a blanket. They floated me gently down the corridor of the Millennium Falcon toward the ramp. A breeze wafted through the ship and it smelled green and rich with life. The fog in my head began to lift a little. We must have landed on Takodana were Maz’s castle had stood before the First Order had attacked and reduced it to rubble. As the gurney hummed smoothly down the ramp moving from the dimly lit interior of the ship into the harsh, natural glare of day, it suddenly felt as if my skin was being sliced by a thousand microscopic shards of glass. Where the light touched me, sharp pin pricks of pain sprang up, then began to flay me to the bone. I screamed and thrashed on the gurney, threatening to turn it over. 

“What’s wrong?” Finn shouted as he and Poe tried to hold me down. Instinctively, I lashed out with the Force and they crashed to the ground several feet away. 

“Get her inside!" Maz said. "Quickly!” 

Chewbacca scooped me up in his giant hairy arms. He was the only one of them strong enough to keep my struggles under control and get me into the protection of Maz’s fortress. He ran, his long strides quickly leaving the others behind. The guards at the rusted iron doors of the fortress flung them open and Chewy barreled inside. I felt the darkness surround me as soon as we entered the dim interior of the stone structure. Its touch soothed away the pain of the light like a cooling balm on a burn. Chewy bellowed for help and that was the last I knew for some time. 


	6. The Dyad

I instantly recognized his tall, broad-shouldered, black-clad form even though he had his back to me. He stood, hands clasped behind his back, looking out at the ocean stretching endlessly away from the craggy gray cliffs, the wind whipping his dark hair around his shoulders. My heart gave a painful jolt. 

The grass beneath my bare feet was so bright green it hurt my eyes. The damp, inhospitable, windswept surroundings were familiar. We were on the island where I finally ended the search for Luke Skywalker. The site of the first Jedi Temple. 

With the cries of the sea birds, the cold wind sighing through the cliffs, the waves crashing on the rocks below, the endless expanse of ocean merging with the endless blue of the sky’s distant horizon, the island was the most beautiful and the most lonely place I’d ever been. I understood why he would appear to me here. It echoed the loneliness within me. Within the both of us. 

Reaching out, I hesitated, my hand hovering inches from him. I was afraid if I touched him he would disappear, fade into the light or blow away on the wind in a swirl of black smoke. It was the same fear I’d had reaching out to him across the fire, across time and space, to touch his hand on that fateful, stormy night.

I let my hand drop to my side. 

He knew I was there, but he didn’t turn around and he didn’t speak. I desperately wanted him to look at me and at the same time I was mortally afraid of what I might see.

“I found you,” I said. 

He glanced over his shoulder and I saw his long, thin face in profile, the noble nose a little too large, the lips a little too full. The horrific scar I’d given him in our struggle on Starkiller Base was gone, mended when I’d healed him on Kef Bir. He was as pale and as beautiful as a distant moon. His eyes were lowered, lashes long and dark against his cheek. 

“You shouldn’t have followed me here,” he said, in his deep, intimately familiar, sorrowful voice. “You always did have trouble letting go.” He turned his gaze back to the sea. 

I felt the emptiness acutely now. The cold void had taken hold after Exegol and was slowly consuming me from the inside, hollowing me out. “Why did you leave me?” I asked.

“Rey…” His voice was like a caress. 

Those last moments filled my vision, pulled me down into the shadowed catacombs beneath the Sith citadel, down, down under the surface of Exegol, deep into the Dark where an ancient evil had lain coiled, waiting. 

In that terrible place, I’d held Ben's hand as he died, watched, helpless, as he faded into the light. I couldn’t let him go. I could still save him. I closed my eyes and reached for him. There was still time. There was still a way. He was just ahead of me, but I could feel his presence rapidly fading. I pushed harder, straining to reach further. My blood’s pulse slowed, each ponderous beat slamming through my body, igniting my fingertips, forcing the darkness to pull away. Stars streaked past me, a million suns brilliant and dying in an instant. I reached with the Force, flung it out ahead of me, a jagged bolt of lightening ripping through the fabric of reality. I reached through the tear, reached for him across the vast separation, reached out to pull him back, screaming as the effort wrenched me apart, reaching, reaching… 

“No! Come back! Don’t leave me!” The echo of a child’s voice overlapped my plea, collapsing the space between us. The wind on the island now carried hints of blasted desert sand, blistering sun and another vast, lonely expanse. 

Ben turned to me. His expression was heartbroken, his dark eyes held a depth of sorrow that matched my own. “I never left you.” 

“Then why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn’t you come back to me?” I asked him. “I called and called and called to you.”

“I know,” he said. “The entire universe heard you.”

“Please, Ben…” I didn’t know what I was asking, but he understood. He understood because he held out his hand to me once, reached for me, begged me to join him. And I had refused. 

His arms went around me and pulled me to him. I sank against him, glad to have his solid strength to lean on. Digging my fingers into the front of his tunic, I clung to him, sobbing uncontrollably. Great heaving gasps collapsed my chest in on the cavernous, echoing emptiness that had formed there. He held me as my entire body shuddered with grief. All the anger and despair contained within me since Exegol was released in a flood of the Dark’s corrosive poison.

Ben sheltered me from the wind, holding me against his warmth until the worst of the anguish had been purged and washed away. Finally the tears subsided.

“It should have been me,” I said. “Why did you bring me back?”

“It was my choice,” he said simply. “You’re stronger than I was. I couldn’t do what you will need to do now.”

“No. That isn’t true. It’s tearing me apart.”

His body shook and I looked up in alarm. He was laughing. I’d never seen him laugh. Mock, scoff, sneer, yes, but I had never witnessed his joy. The sweet smile I’d glimpsed so briefly at the end had been the best of him. This… this _transformed_ him. This was Ben as he should have been. As he was meant to be.

He looked down at me with a crooked grin. “Must you argue with me even now?”

“Our disagreements would have been legendary,” I said, smiling through the tears.

“No doubt.” 

I rested my cheek against his chest. This was how I wanted the rest of my existence to be. “I still need you,” I said. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“You must do what Luke charged you to do. What all Skywalkers are called to do. You must lead them — _teach_ them. ” 

“But I’m not a Skywalker. I’m a… Palpatine.”

“No one’s fate is set, Rey, no one’s,” Ben said. “Not yours. Not mine. No one is born to darkness or to the light. Neither blood nor circumstance decide your course. The choices you make determine your destiny.”

His hand rested on my abdomen as it had when he’d poured his own life-giving energy into me, dying to restore my life. “Besides,” he said, “you’re as much of a Skywalker now as I was.”

I reached up and touched his face. He closed his brilliant eyes and pressed his cheek into the palm of my hand. Then he took it in his own and brought it to his lips before holding it to his heart. 

“You can’t come to me here again,” he said.

He’d always known what to say to wound me deepest. I searched his eyes for answers but saw only my reflection there. “Don’t make me go.”

“Don’t be afraid. Nothing can separate us for long. This lifetime is brief, but you must live it.”

“It hurts too much.” 

He pressed his forehead to mine. “Let go of the pain.”

“I can’t. It’s all I have left.”

“Silly girl,” he said, with an affection I’d never heard in life. “You know you can’t get rid of me that easily. Our bond cannot be severed, not even now. We are one in the Force.”

“You’ll be with me?”

“That is the nature of the Force.” He straightened and looked out to sea once again as if he heard someone calling his name. “You must go. They’ll be arriving soon. You must be there to greet them.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Those that heard your call.”

Once again a great unfathomable distance and time pulled me between the stars, but this time a calm came over me and I didn’t resist. I stretched out my hand to him across the increasing distance and he extended his to me. Our fingers touched.

“Ben, I…” The darkness enveloped me, obscuring everything except his voice. 

“I know,” he said. “I feel it too.”


	7. The Return

_Ben…_

It was Maz who stood from the chair where she sat next to my bed and put her hand to my forehead. “How are you feeling?”

“Thirsty,” I croaked. 

Maz helped me sit up and brought me some water, steadying my hands as I clasped the cup and brought it to my chapped lips. Once I had drank my fill, she asked, “Did you dream?”

I collapsed back against the pillows. I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, but I couldn’t lie to Maz. Her gaze behind the thick lenses was too perceptive. 

“Yes,” I said. 

“Good, good,” Maz said. “Perhaps now the healing can begin.” 

“How long have I been sick?” I asked, relieved she’d chosen to change the subject.

“You arrived on Takodana ten days ago.”

I couldn’t remember anything about the last ten days at all. Only Ben was clear in my mind. 

“We were all quite worried about you,” Maz said. “The healer said you had been infected by some sort of parasite while you were on Exegol. Fortunately with the aid of some off-world medicinal help and three days in a bacta tank you were almost good as new. You just wouldn’t wake up.”

Maz refilled my glass and waited until I’d taken a few sips before she continued. “I even tried reaching out to you through the Force, but you simply weren’t there.” She looked bewildered. “Where did you go, little one?”

I remained silent, staring down at my hands. Maz resumed her chair and eventually continued with her story.

“We didn't know what to do. Your body was healthy again, but you were fading. Your light was going out. It felt like you were dying. Last night I came into your room to check on you — it was Finn’s turn to sit with you, but he had fallen asleep in the chair — and there was a man standing next to your bed. 

My heart gave a hard thump. “What did he look like?”

“Odd,” Maz said, after a moment of consideration. “Tall, dark, pale… He was standing partially in the dark on the far side of your bed and I could swear he almost glowed around the edges like — not a ghost exactly, he seemed solid enough — but like he was rimmed in starlight.”

“Did he say anything?” I asked.

Maz nodded. “He knelt down, took your hand and held it.” She demonstrated putting her own hand flat against her chest over her heart. “He stayed there for a while, watching you.”

My hands clenched around the cup trembled. Her words were a comfort to my aching heart.

“I will tell you, at that point, I had my blaster out because he cut a fearsome figure. I wasn’t about to let any further harm come to you. Then he leaned in and kissed you so gently…” Her voice trailed off, remembering. “You didn’t open your eyes, but clear as day you said, ‘Ben’. Well, of course, that was the best thing that I’d heard all week. It gave me hope that you might pull out of it. But the man… the look on his face was so strange. So sad... but more than that…”

Maz gave a watery sniffle and pushed aside her goggles to wipe at her eyes. She was surprisingly sentimental for a pirate. “I thought my heart would shatter into a million pieces.”

When she pulled herself together, she went on. “When he looked straight at me, I’m not ashamed to admit I was a little afraid, with the starlight pouring out of him, eyes as sharp as daggers. He said, in a voice that gave me chills all over, ‘Remind her she is not alone.’ Then Finn woke up snorting and snuffling and trying to draw his blaster, yelling something about Kylo Ren. When I looked back, the man was gone.”

A long silence stretched as her story ended. “Who was he?” she finally asked.

I sighed. “Ben Solo.”

“Ahhhhh,” she said sagely, as if seeing the final picture revealed as the last piece of the puzzle slid into place. “Han and Leia’s boy. So he’s the one I saw for you. A dyad. Am I correct?”

“Yes,” I said, startled. 

“Well then,” she exclaimed, slapping her thigh. “I never thought I’d see another one of those, even if I lived another thousand years. The wonders of the Force never cease.”

“How did you know?” I asked. 

She waggled a finger at me and winked. “That’s a story for another time, child. For now you should rest. Recuperate. Recover your full strength, then we will decide what to do.”

Hopping down from her chair, she took the cup from my hands. I lay back and she pulled the blanket up around me, dimmed the lights, and left the room closing the door behind her. Starlight streamed into the room from several open windows in the room. A breeze stirred the diaphanous curtains and I thought I could smell the ocean and hear the soft susurration of waves. 

“I know what I need to do,” I whispered.

Some time later, when I was able, I took Luke and Leia’s lightsabers to Tatooine. My friends protested, but I insisted on going in the Millennium Falcon accompanied only by BB-8. It was a pilgrimage, of sorts.

Wrapping the saber hilts tenderly in tanned bantha hide, I buried them together at the edge of the moisture farm that had once been Luke’s childhood home. As they disappeared beneath the sand, I felt a sense of completion within the Force. The symmetry was restored. Someday they would call for others to wield them. When the time was right, they would be found again. Until then, they would rest. 

As the two suns began to set, I felt the twins’ presence. Though neither of them spoke to me, their appearance felt like a benediction.

The old woman asked me who I was. 

“Rey,” I said. “Rey Skywalker.”

It was fitting that the new school should be built on the site of the first Jedi Temple. The Force was strong on the island at the edge of the known worlds. The very stones beneath my feet radiated a calm energy, steeped in history and remembrances of a time long ago. There was no need to kill the past, but it was folly to cling to it. Within the Force, all things were connected, all things were impermanent. 

On the cliffs overlooking the sea, I watched as the waves were born and died away in a cycle of eternal change. 

I closed my eyes and called to him. “Ben."

I couldn’t see him, but I felt his presence as I watched the suns rise.

“I’ve come,” I spoke into the air. “A new day dawns for the Jedi.”


	8. The Final Journey

I’d been residing on the island a year when the first students arrived; a boy of nine clad in a rough homespun tunic and a floppy hat, carrying not much more than the clothes on his back, and a woman, fully-grown, garbed in the heavy brocade robes of a noble family from Naboo. More students continued to arrive, pulled from the remotest parts of the galaxy by a call none of them could explain, until the island could no longer contain them all. Eventually, the school moved to the mainland to a facility and grounds built by a grateful government, The People’s Alliance, for the services rendered in the defeat of the First Order and the destruction of the Emperor and his armies. They also attempted to erect a statue in my honor, but I staunchly refused to allow it. That was not the way of the Force. The school would not become a place to worship the Jedi, past or present. 

The sacred Jedi texts found a home in the new library, but the knowledge they contained was no longer hoarded, kept only for the select few deemed worthy. Instead the books were translated and distributed across the galaxy to anyone who wished to read them. From the school’s founding onward, all knowledge the Jedi collected — oftentimes revealed in the most surprising ways — was shared among all.

There were no Masters in the new school. I had developed an aversion to the title, remembering Ben’s subjugation under the manipulative control of his Dark Masters. It reeked of enslavement. I was adamant no student or fellow Jedi would ever call or be called Master by another within or without its walls. I required no bended knee, no unearned respect, no sworn fealty from my students. Only to the Force did they owe their allegiance and was it was to the Force they swore their final oaths. The older I got the more I found myself waving away their attempts to display their regard. I had no wish to be venerated by my students or anyone else, but it didn’t stop them from trying. 

Teacher became the preferred title of respect during the dawn of the new Jedi Order. There were again Knights in the Order, but over time there also developed Adepts, Elders, Guides, Sentinels, Counselors, Sages, Guardians, Seers and Wisdoms, but never again a Master. A different title was to be reserved for me, though I strove to eschew all but my chosen name of Skywalker. In jest, my first students took to calling me Mother, and, despite my best efforts to prevent it, so it would be from my first student to my last. Eventually I accepted the sobriquet because, in the end, all who came to the school were my children. Whether they realized it or not, the Jedi of the New Dawn were as much a product of Ben and I as if they had been born to us.

So it was in my last days. 

The long years weighed heavily upon me and my old bones grew weary. I had walked long enough in the Force to know the time was upon me. I had been teacher and advisor to councils, kings and queens and Mother to countless students. (And there had been adventures, to be sure, many adventures. But as Maz would say, those are stories for another time. Or perhaps for others to tell.) The People’s Alliance was thriving, bringing prosperity and peace to the galaxy and the Jedi were there to assist in bringing those dreams to fruition. Once again the Jedi were spoken of with respect, seen as teachers of enlightenment, guardians of peace and a power for good in the galaxy. 

Our children, all. 

I spoke to the Jedi council and told them my plans. By unanimous vote, Jein Skywalker, was selected to lead them. Ben’s child would be the one to bring the Jedi into the new era. I was satisfied. My work was done.

When word spread of my leave-taking, people from across the galaxy flocked to Ahch-To. I walked among them, touching faces young and old, in the warm, golden days of autumn. In the middle of the celebration, I left for the island, sailing the sea with a few of my closest friends. Lando had passed some years back after serving many years as a respected diplomat of the People’s Alliance and Poe was no longer among us, but Finn, much much older now with hair as white as new snowfall, was at my side, as was the ever faithful Chewbacca, the wise and seemingly eternal Maz Kanata and my twin children, Jein and Jota, as well as a few other beloved comrades.

We arrived at the island and, after sharing stories and bread and a few tears, I took my staff in hand and began to climb the stairs to the heights. I had to stop many times on the way to the top to catch my breath. I was not as young as I once was, but I have always had hidden depths of strength. 

Once there on the cliffs overlooking the sea, I removed my shoes and scrunched my crooked, arthritic toes in the bright green grass. It appeared as though nothing had changed — the birds’ cries, the crash of the waves, the smell of the sea and the damp stones — but I knew everything had changed, was always changing. From moment to moment, every passing was a living and a dying. All would continue to change, as I had changed and would continue to change, as was the nature of all things within the Force.

Lowering myself into a seated position, I placed my staff and my lightsaber hilt in the grass beside me. I had built both with my own hands and both had served me well. I breathed deeply of the sea air. It was as it should be.

I closed my eyes and reached out with the Force. “Ben.”

Back at the school of the New Dawn, the Jedi paused in their labors and tilted their faces into the setting suns as the call washed over them. Across the planets, between the stars, and into the vast black, it whispered and, as one, my children paused to listen. 

“Rey.” His voice. I opened my eyes to see him standing there at the cliff’s edge, just as I remembered. His eyes were full of love and hope. He held out his hand. 

I took it.


End file.
